# Impact

In the Orbit Model, we define the **impact** of a community as the set of
outcomes that happen thanks to the operation of the community.

When a business
invests in community, the community returns that investment by having an impact
on goals the business deems important, such as sales, marketing, product, social
impact, and more.

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Because community doesn't just impact one part of the business, we need to break
the impact into parts to analyze the total ROI. Each part, called a flywheel,
creates a virtuous cycle between the community's operations and one or more goals
of the organization. As the flywheel spins community input is turned into
business value, which feeds back energy into the community. Hence why we
call it a flywheel.

## Flywheels

Explore the various community flywheels using the site navigation. These are not
an exclusive list of flywheels, just enough to get you started.

## Community-led growth

A community-led growth motion is one where the community is the primary driver
of growth by virtue of member-generated content, advocacy, and the creating of
value by members for each other. An essential part of community-led growth is
defining setting up flywheels and measuring the impact of each. Learn more
about [community-led growth](./impact/community-led-growth).

## Go-to-community

Product companies have a Go-to-market (GTM) strategy that determines how they
will market and sell their products. We encourage companies to have a
corresponding Go-to-community (GTC) motion that describes how and why the
community will be built. An essential part of a GTC strategy is defining how the
community will impact business goals and what the essential community flywheels
are.

While community-led growth implies that the community is the _primary_ growth
driver for a product, any product with a community can benefit from a GTC
strategy in order to accelerate growth.

To learn more, check out [Community ≠ Marketing: Why We Need Go-to-Community,
Not Just
Go-to-Market](https://future.a16z.com/community-%E2%89%A0-marketing-why-we-need-go-to-community-not-just-go-to-market/)
by [Patrick Woods](https://twitter.com/patrickjwoods).
